When belief means a battle

TRACY - A Druid lives behind the walls of Deuel Vocational Institution, a state prison for men near Tracy.

Scott Smith

TRACY - A Druid lives behind the walls of Deuel Vocational Institution, a state prison for men near Tracy.

Morgan James Kane, a burly man with tattooed forearms, follows a neopagan belief older than Christianity. The little-known religion born among ancient Celts promotes the divinity of nature. Druids celebrate the sun, moon and turning seasons.

Magic and miracles are possible for the pure at heart, a belief Druids like Kane still hold.

"I have been following what today is called 'Druidism' all of my 54 years," Kane wrote in the course of a yearlong correspondence with a Record reporter documenting his religions practices and obstacles he sometimes confronts in prison.

Kane - who pleaded guilty in 1984 to murdering a Fresno man with cyanide - says he's at odds with prison officials over his religious freedoms. He doesn't receive the same access to chapel time as inmates of mainstream religions, and he claims prison staffers have outright targeted him for his faith.

While prisoner advocates say they've won incremental progress in hard-fought battles toward equality for inmates of various religions, they add that more challenges lie ahead. Kane is just one an example.

Refuting the notion that minority religions are treated differently, a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation official contends the agency accommodates all faith groups.

"We're required to do that and want to do that," said Michael Carrington, a state prison official who heads up efforts to increase faith-based programs for inmates. "We've always gone out of our way."

As proof, he said the state employs 154 full-time chaplains from five faiths. The first were hired in 1931 to minister to Protestant, Catholic and Jewish inmates. Muslim chaplains came on in 1981 and American Indian spiritual advisers in 1990.

Carrington said they provide Jewish prisoners with kosher meals and the state is taking steps to make sure Muslim inmates have halal meals, with meat from animals slaughtered according to Islamic rules.

Some 11,000 spiritual advisers volunteer where the paid chaplains can't reach, he added.

Yet the reams of lawsuits that inmates, their spiritual advisers and attorneys have filed over the years to expand religious rights suggest a slow, uneven struggle for recognition.

Susan Christian, a civil rights attorney with the Prison Law Office in Berkeley, said she has been on the frontline of expensive and time-consuming litigation pressing for inmates' rights guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution.

In 1995 she began representing 300 Muslim inmates at California State Prison, Solano, in an almost decade-long fight in federal court for their right to grow half-inch beards and leave their work assignments for Friday afternoon's Juma religious services without penalty.

Christian also helped a Nazarene inmate at San Quentin State Prison keep his long hair. His religious sect, which recognizes Jesus' virgin birth while also following Old Testament teaching, forbade him from cutting it.

Long hair also has been a significant issue for American Indian inmates whose plight Christian called heartbreaking. She heard from men who hadn't cut their hair since the time they were children on the reservation, she said.

"They were being thrown into the hole, given extra time in prison and confined just because they wouldn't cut their hair," she said.

For years, prison officials denied these religious expressions, saying they compromised prison security. They would say that an inmate could cut his long hair or beard to change his appearance, making it easier to escape, and the argument was over, Christian said.

That changed in 2000, the year President Bill Clinton signed into law the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, which raised the standard of scrutiny government agencies must meet before restricting prisoners' faith.

Religious equality remains elusive, said Patrick McCollum, a Wiccan who for 12 years has served as a spiritual adviser for California prisoners. Like Druidism, Wicca is a nature-based faith that reveres things like the turning seasons and a germinating seedling.

Now a volunteer spiritual adviser, the Moraga man is trying to force prison officials into hiring him as the state's first paid Wiccan chaplain.

"The California prison system is still in the mode of trying to minimize and stop the practice of minority faiths," said McCollum, an internationally recognized advocate of religious freedoms.

A bias against minority religions is institutional, he said. McCollum argues that because the state hires chaplains from five major faith groups, all others suffer discrimination.

At some prisons, Wiccans outnumber the inmates of mainstream religions, yet the state won't hire a chaplain for them, said McCollum, a claim that could not be independently verified because officials do not keep statistics on inmates' faiths.

McCollum further argues that a prisoner stepping before a parole board and professing Christianity receives praise, while one saying he's found Wicca, Druidism or Asatru - a Norse religion - is likely to be punished, McCollum said.

"If the state creates a system where Wiccans can be treated fairly," McCollum said, "everyone else can be treated fairly."

A judge earlier this year threw out McCollum's lawsuit attempting to make the state hire him as a Wicca chaplain, saying he had no standing. McCollum said he is planning an appeal.

At Deuel, Kane said he encounters bias personally. He's barred from worshipping with the few other neopagan inmates or buying religious books with money from the chaplaincy fund - privileges he said that are afforded to Christian, Jewish and Muslim inmates.

He also claims being targeted because he is a Druid. Late last year, mainstream chaplains trumped up an accusation that he had dangerous contraband - a small lock - which landed him for a spell in solitary confinement, Kane said.

He said this happened because of The Record's interest in his faith. Kane said he beat the charge in a prison hearing. The Record could not independently verify the incident, and Deuel spokesman Lt. Gilbert Valenzuela said he could not substantiate Kane's claims.

Despite this, Kane said Druidry gives him a sense of purpose and cultural heritage. Born on the British Isle of Man, he spoke Gaelic until age six. He illegally entered the United States as a boy with his mother. He has followed Druidry since birth, he said in a letter.

"I was nearly 12 years old before I ever stepped into a Christian church or heard of their savior - Jesus Christ."

He teaches other inmates about his faith. Mostly, it provides meaning for him, especially in prison, where he's serving a sentence of 27 years to life.

"My belief in Druidism ... is what has allowed me to keep myself going forward," he wrote. "Through the teachings of the ancients and those today ... I have learned how to be patient and how to act in a positive manner to negative reactions."